Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  Resnick cupped both hands together and lifted them to his face, breathing out warm air.

  Back upstairs in the CID room, Lynn Kellogg was talking to a Mrs Marston from a village just north of Melton Mowbray, arranging for her and her husband to be picked up and driven to the city, there to assist in the identification of the body of a fifteen-year-old girl who corresponded to the description of their missing daughter.

  Her name was Kate. She’d run away twice before without getting further than Leicester services on the M1. The usual things: clothes, boys, forever missing the last bus home, the silver stud she’d had put through her nose, the ring she wanted through her navel. Fifteen years and three months. Pills. Sex. Her father ran a small holding, found it hard; four mornings a week her mum worked in a newsagent in Melton, cycling the seven or so miles so she could open up first thing. Weekends they helped out at the local nature reserve, her mum made scones, coffee and walnut cake, the best.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Resnick had said, “if it is her, don’t tell them any more than they need to know.”

  Ashen-faced, Tom Marston held his wife by the shoulders as she beat her fists against his chest, her screams of denial tearing the sterile air.

  The morning papers were full of it. Schoolgirl sex. Prostitution. Murder. An ordinary family grieves. Photographs of Kate in her school uniform vied for space with close-ups of her parents, stolen with a tele-photo lens. The police are seeking to trace the driver of a blue van, seen in the vicinity of Addison Street and Forest Road East.

  The pathologist beat his deadline by close on an hour. DNA samples taken from the girl’s body confirmed that the semen came from two different men, one of whom was the source of the blood that had soaked her dress. Scrapings of skin found beneath her fingernails were from the second man. Filaments of a muddy-green synthetic material, also taken from under her nails, seemed to have come from cheap, generic carpeting.

  Two men, one young girl. A room without windows, a locked door. Do they take it in turns, one watching through a peep hole while the other performs? A video camera? Polaroids? When she screams, as Resnick assumes she must, why are those screams not heard? And the handcuffs – is she cuffed to a bed or somehow to the floor?

  Anil Khan took Eileen to Central Station and watched while she went through book after book of mug shots, barely glancing at each page. Resnick was there on the spread of pavement when she left.

  “Don’t go out tonight, Eileen. Stay close to home.”

  He turned and watched as she continued on down Shakespeare Street towards the taxi rank on Mansfield Road.

  Back in his own kitchen, the cats winding between his legs, anxious to be fed, Resnick poured himself a generous shot of scotch and drank it down, two swallows then a third. Blood on the walls. Was there blood on the walls? He forked tinned food into four bowls, poured water and milk. Officers had contacted accident and emergency at Queens and the other hospitals, the only serious stab wounds seemingly the result of drunk and disorderly or domestics, but these were all being checked. He rinsed his hands beneath the tap before assembling a sandwich on slices of dark rye, grinding coffee. Skin beneath the girl’s finger nails. Fighting back. Had she somehow got hold of a knife, seized it when, for whatever reason, the cuffs were undone? Or had there been a falling out between the two men? Jealousy? Fear?

  The front room struck cold, the radiators likely in need of bleeding; switching on the light, Resnick pulled across the curtains, thankful for their weight. Why strangle her? Take her life? A fit of anger, irrational, unplanned? A response to being attacked? Somehow, had things gone too far, got out of hand? He crossed to the stereo where a CD still lay in place: Billie Holiday on Commodore. ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’. ‘Strange Fruit’.

  Less than forty minutes later, sandwich and coffee long finished, Billie’s voice still ringing in his head, he prised the smallest cat from his lap, switched off the amplifier, lifted down his top-coat from the pegs in the hall, and went out to where the elderly Saab was parked alongside the house.

  Slowly, doubtless looking like a punter himself, he drove around the Forest, doubling back through a succession of interlocking streets until he was sure Eileen was not there. When, later, he passed her house, lights were burning upstairs and down.

  His sleep was patchy and by five he was fully awake, listening to the breathing of the two cats entwined near the foot of his bed, the faint fall of snow against the pane.

  They would have known, wouldn’t they, that Eileen had seen the girl getting into their van.

  Next morning, the snow on the streets was just a memory. Sunshine leaked, pale and weak, through clouds smeared purplish-grey. At the obligatory press conference, Resnick made a brief statement, responded to questions without ever really answering, showed a right and proper concern for the Marstons in their bereavement. “Good job,” said the public relations officer approvingly, as they left the platform. Resnick scowled.

  The job was being done in the CID office, the incident room, men and women accessing computer files, cross-checking messages, transcripts of interviews. So easy to let things slip, fail to make the right connection, wrongly prioritise. In addition to the sex offenders’ register, they would check through the Vice Squad’s list of men stopped and cautioned trawling the red-light district in their cars. Married men. Business men. Men who were inadequate, law-abiding, lonely, unhinged. Men with a record of violence. Men who cuddled up to their wives each night in the matrimonial bed, never forgot an anniversary, a birthday, kissed the children and wished them happiness, sweet dreams.

  Neither of the DNA samples taken from Kate Marston’s body found a positive match. Follow-up calls relating to reported stab wounds yielded nothing.

  Time passed.

  Four days after the enquiry had begun, the burned-out skeleton of a blue Ford Escort van was found at the end of a narrow track near Moorgreen Reservoir, some dozen miles north-west of the city centre.

  Late on the Sunday evening, as Resnick was letting himself back into the house after a couple of hours at the Polish Club, accordions and reminiscence, bison grass vodka, the phone rang in the hall. The sergeant out at Carlton wasted few words: name’s Eileen, sir, hell of a state, asking for you.

  Within minutes, driving with particular care, Resnick was heading south on Porchester Road, cutting through towards Carlton Hill.

  She was pale, shaken, huddled inside a man’s raincoat, the collar upturned. There were grazes to her face and hands and knees, a swelling high on her right temple; below her left cheekbone, a bruise slowly emerging like soft fruit. A borrowed sweater, several sizes too large, covered the silver snap-front uplift bra and matching g-string: she had got a job stripping after all. Her feet were bare. She had climbed out of the bathroom window of a house off Westdale Lane, jumped from the roof of the kitchen extension to the ground and fallen heavily, run through the side gate on to the road, throwing herself, more or less, in front of the first car which came along. The duty sergeant had calmed her down as best he could, taken a brief statement, provided tea and cigarettes.

  Eileen saw Resnick with relief and tugged at his sleeve, her words tumbling over one another, breathlessly. “It was him. I swear it. At the house.”

  “Which house? Eileen, slow down.”

  Someone called, set up this private session, his brother’s birthday. Half-a-dozen of them there, all blokes. Just as I was getting into it, he showed himself, back of the room. I don’t know if he meant to, not then. Anyhow, I just panicked. Panicked and ran. Shut myself in the bathroom and locked the door behind me.”

  “And it was him, the driver from the van? You’re certain?”

  “Not the driver,” Eileen said. “The other man.”

  “This address,” Resnick said, turning towards the sergeant. “Off Westdale Lane, you’ve checked it out?”

  “No, sir. Not as yet.”

  “Why in God’s name not?”

  “Way I saw it, sir, seeing as she’d asked for y
ou, I thought to wait, just, you know, in case . . .”

  “Get some people out there now. I doubt you’ll find anyone still inside, but if you do, I want them brought in so fast their feet don’t touch the ground. And get the place sealed. I’ll want it gone over tomorrow with a fine-tooth comb. Knock up the neighbours, find out who lives there, anything else you can. Whatever you get, I want it passed through to me direct. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then snap to it.”

  Resnick turned towards Eileen. “Whoever made this booking, did he leave a name?”

  “Phil.”

  “That was it?”

  “Yes.” Instead of looking at him now, she was staring at the floor. “There’s something else,” she said, her voice so quiet he could only just make out the words.

  “Go on.”

  “Not here,” she said, glancing round. “Not here.”

  Taking her arm, Resnick led Eileen outside to where the Saab was parked at the kerb. “I’ll take you home. We can talk there.”

  “No.” Fear in her eyes. “He knows, doesn’t he? He knows where I live.”

  “Okay,” Resnick said, holding open a car door. “Get in.”

  Less than ten minutes later they were standing in the broad hallway of Resnick’s house, a small commotion of cats scurrying this way and that.

  “Charlie . . .”

  “Yes?” It still took him by surprise, the way she used his name.

  “Before anything else, can I have a bath?”

  “Of course. Follow the stairs round and it’s on the left. I’ll leave you a towel outside the door.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And that trick with the bathroom window,” he called after her. “I wouldn’t recommend it twice in the same evening.”

  Taking his time he grilled bacon, sliced bread, broke eggs into a bowl; when he heard her moving around in the bathroom, the water running away, he forked butter into a small pan and turned the gas up high, adding shavings of Parmesan to the eggs before they set.

  Eileen appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing an old dressing gown he scarcely ever bothered with, a towel twisted around her head.

  “I thought you should eat,” Resnick said.

  “I doubt if I can.”

  But, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, she wolfed it down, folding a piece of the bread in half and wiping the last of the egg from her plate.

  Uncertain, Pepper and Miles miaowed from a distance.

  “Don’t you feed them, Charlie?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Eileen pushed away her plate. “You know what I need after that?”

  “A cup of coffee?”

  “A cigarette.”

  She stood in the rear doorway, looking out across the garden, a few stunted trees in silhouette and, beyond the wall, the land falling away into darkness.

  Resnick rinsed dishes at the sink.

  When she came back inside and closed the door behind her, her skin shone from the cold. “He’s one of yours,” she said.

  Resnick felt the breath stop inside his body.

  “Vice, at least I suppose that’s what he is. The sauna, that’s where I saw him, just the once. With one of the girls. Knocked her around. Split her lip. It wasn’t till tonight I was sure.”

  “You scarcely saw him in the van. You said so yourself.”

  “Charlie, I’m sure.”

  “So the description you gave before . . .”

  “It was accurate, far as it went.”

  “And now?”

  “He’s got – I don’t know what you’d call it – a lazy eye, the left. It sort of droops. Just a little. Maybe you’d never notice at first, but then, when you do . . . The way he looks at you.”

  Resnick nodded. “The driver, did you see him there tonight as well?”

  Eileen shook her head. “I don’t know. No. I don’t think so. I mean, he could’ve been, but no, I’m sorry, I couldn’t say.”

  “It’s okay.” Now that the shock had faded, Resnick caught himself wondering why the allegation was less of a surprise than it was.

  “You don’t know him?” Eileen asked. “Know who he is?”

  Resnick shook his head. “It won’t take long to find out.”

  In the front room he sat in his usual chair and Eileen rested her back against one corner of the settee, legs pulled up beneath her, glass of scotch balancing on the arm.

  “You’ll go after him?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “On my word?”

  “Yes.”

  She picked up her drink. “You’ll need more than that, Charlie. In court. The word of a whore.”

  “Yes. Agreed.”

  The heating had clicked off and the room was slowly getting colder. He wondered why it didn’t seem stranger, her sitting there. Refilling both their glasses, he switched on the stereo and, after a passage of piano, there was Billie’s voice, half-broken . . .

  I ain’t good lookin’ and my hair don’t curl

  I ain’t good lookin’ and my hair don’t curl

  But my mama she gave me somethin’,

  gonna carry me through this world.

  “Sounds like,” Eileen said with a grin, “she knows what she’s talking about.”

  Less than ten minutes later, she was stretching her arms and yawning. “I think I’ll just curl up on here, if that’s the same to you.”

  “No need. There’s a spare room upstairs. Two.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Suit yourself. And if any of the cats jump up on you, push them off.”

  Eileen shook her head. “I might like the company.”

  It was a little after two when she climbed in with him, the dressing gown discarded somewhere between the door and the bed. Startled awake, Resnick thrashed out with his arm and only succeeded in sending the youngest cat skittering across the floor.

  “Charlie.”

  “Christ, Eileen!”

  Her limbs were strong and smooth and cold.

  “Eileen, you can’t . . .”

  “Shush.”

  She lay with one leg angled over his knee, an arm across his midriff holding him close, her head to his chest. Within minutes the rhythm of her breathing changed and she was asleep, her breath faint and regular on his skin.

  How long, Resnick wondered, since he had lain with a woman like this, in this bed? When his fingers touched the place between her shoulder and her neck, she stirred slightly, murmuring a name that wasn’t his.

  It was a little while later before the cat felt bold enough to resume its place back on the bed.

  “Is there anywhere you can go?” Resnick asked. “Till all this blows over.”

  “You mean, apart from here.”

  “Apart from here.”

  They were in the kitchen, drinking coffee, eating toast.

  “Look, if it’s last night . . .”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I mean, it’s not as if . . .”

  “It’s what you said yourself, at the moment everything’s hanging on your word. It just needs someone to make the wrong connection between you and me . . .”

  “Okay, you don’t have to spell it out. I understand.”

  The radio was still playing, muffled, in the bathroom. Politics: the same evasions, the same lies. As yet the outside temperature had scarcely risen above freezing, the sky several shades of grey.

  “I’ve got a friend,” Eileen said, “in Sheffield. I can go there.” She glanced down at what she was now wearing, one of his shirts. A morning-after cliché. “Only I shall need some clothes.”

  “I’ll drive you round to your place after breakfast, wait while you pack.”

  “Thanks.”

  Resnick drank the last of his coffee, pushed himself to his feet. “You’ll let me have a number, in case I need to get in touch?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  She took one more mouthful of toast and left the rest.

&n
bsp; They were gathered together in Resnick’s office, the clamour of the everyday going on behind its closed door: Graham Millington, Anil Khan and Sharon Garnett. Sharon had been a member of the Vice Squad before being reassigned to Resnick’s team and had maintained her contacts.

  “Burford,” Sharon said once Resnick had relayed the description. “Jack Burford, it’s got to be.”

  Millington whistled, a malicious glint in his eye. “Jack Burford – honest as the day is long.”

  It wasn’t so far from the shortest day of the year.

  “How well do you know him?” Resnick asked.

  “Well enough,” Sharon said. “We’d have a drink together once in a while.” She laughed. “Never too comfortable in my company, Jack. A woman who speaks her mind and black to boot, more than he could comfortably handle. No, a bunch of lads, prize fights, lock-ins and lap dancers, that was more Jack’s mark. Gambling, too. In and out of Ladbroke’s most afternoons.”

  “These lads, anyone closer to him than the rest?”

  She gave it a few moments’ thought. “Jimmy Lyons, if anyone.”

  “Left the force, didn’t he?” Millington said. “About a year back. Early retirement or some such.”

  “There was an inquiry,” Sharon said. “Allegations of taking money to turn a blind eye. Massage parlours, the usual thing. Didn’t get anywhere.”

  “And they worked together,” Resnick asked, “Burford and Lyons.”

  Sharon nodded. “Quite a bit.”

  “Lyons,” Resnick said. “Anyone know where he is now?”

  Nobody did.

  “Okay, Sharon, chase up one or two of your contacts at Vice, those you think you can trust. See what the word is on Burford. Anil, see if you can track down Lyons. He might still be in the city somewhere, in which case he and Burford could still be in touch.”

  Millington was already at the door. “I’d best get myself out to Carlton, see how they’re getting on. You’ll not want them dragging their feet on this.”